Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

Better late than never, right? I've got good excuses, though. Had a baby. Was reading it aloud with DH. Snatching moments to read whenever and wherever we could...you get the picture. The problem is, what to say now that I finally finished it. Because the truth is the real reason it took me so long to reach the end is that it was....well....boring. Not just the ending, which was utterly lacking in anything resembling a climax, but the entire story. By the end of Book Two I had been sapped of the will to live. Let alone the will to care about the characters anymore.

So, yeah. I'm sitting here feeling a bit betrayed and a bit disappointed. But mostly I'm mystified. I sat there shaking my head throughout the entire third book, my brow furrowed, one sentence on an endless loop in my head, "Wh-, wh-, what happened?" To Bella who was first and foremost an everygirl and not a superhero. To Edward who was vivid and dangerous and not a mere vehicle for exposition. To Jacob who was a protector and friend and not Edward's best bud, stripped of his will and happy about it. And to Alice who was lovely and awesome and present, not absent and useless for the majority of the 700+ pages. None of the characters I'd cared about for three books were themselves in this final volume. Not one.

So set aside the fact that Bella would never name her child that. Set aside the fact that the only enjoyable section (Jacob's) ended in the most absurd (read: revolting) way imaginable. Set aside even the fact that nobody had to sacrifice anything to get their heart's desire (and thus the fact that they achieved that desire is rendered null and void in my mind). The important thing is the characters were not true to themselves. They, like the carefully laid out rules of their world, were summarily bent and reformed into unrecognizable shapes for the sake of providing the bewildered reader with a universal happy ending for every. single. character. It wasn't what this reader wanted and it wasn't what the story needed. But it's what we got.

All of this said, I am glad this most unfortunate of endings hasn't tainted Twilight for me in the least. It remains a favorite and one I'll certainly reread. I'll just stop there.

Links
Just about any link anywhere. Your mileage may vary. Go find the one that floats your boat.

Wanderlust Contest

Interested in winning $200 in free books from your choice of bookstores? Hop on over to Ann Aguirre's blog and enter the contest. All you have to do is purchase her new novel, Wanderlust, featuring Sirantha Jax of Grimspace fame and enter your order or transaction number as a comment on her blog. You definitely want to pick this one up. As of this post, I'm 50 pages in and completely absorbed. Enjoy!

Underground by Kat Richardson

Okay, this series continues to entertain me much more than I initially expected it to. I was so pleased to get a copy of Underground for my birthday and I immediately dived right in. It picks up shortly after the events of Poltergeist and Harper is still dealing both physically and emotionally with the fallout from her ghostbusting stint. Things with tall, blond, and lanky Will are less than stellar and distraction comes in the form of Harper's mysterious friend Quinton who shows up on her doorstep demanding she investigate a rather gruesomely dead body he ran across on the train tracks. It's not the first dead body to be found in a similar state in recent weeks and Harper and Quinton discover up close and personally that it won't be the last either. Together they traipse through the uncanny city underneath Seattle's streets in search of a mythical monster who may or may not be eating the city's homeless and may or may not be controlled by an ancient Native American god.

Once again, I simply love the way Kat Richardson describes Harper's Seattle. And this time around she's added Quinton's Seattle--a very different city altogether, populated by the homeless and the dissident, and located entirely underground. I've been wanting more on this particular character and storyline and Underground provides a satisfying amount of info while still saving a few secrets for future installments. Just like Harper, I was sucked into the mysteries behind each underground inhabitant, particularly Quinton and just who he's hiding from and why. This book had a slightly grander feel than its predecessors by nature of the monster they're fighting and I loved the inclusion of Seattle's more unusual history as well as the Native American legend and language. Harper remains a likable, scrappy character who I look forward to following. If you enjoyed Greywalker, make sure you pick this one up. Definitely my favorite Greywalker book thus far.

Links
Darque Review
Jeri Smith-Ready Interview
Pulp Fiction Review

True Blood Trailer

Here's the trailer for HBO's True Blood series based on Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books. The show stars Anna Paquin as Sookie and premieres September 7th. If you're a Sookie fan, I want to hear what you think of this sneak peek.

Chalice Sneak Peek

Robin McKinley has posted a sneak peek at the first chapter of Chalice over at her blog. And it's a nice, juicy peek.

Enjoy here.

Piper Jenny